'Star Wars' Concept Art Reveals Early Ideas For a Very Different, Cooler Jakku

Perhaps the biggest world-building contribution to the Star Wars universe made by J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens was the planet of Jakku, home of Daisy Ridley’s Rey, which is marked by vast deserts and endless galactic garbage, including — most memorably — a crashed Imperial Star Destroyer. It’s the setting for not only key character introductions but also some of the film’s early action set pieces, although as newly posted concept art reveals, it might have had a very different look.

New images uploaded to the official Star Wars Instagram page show various incarnations of Jakku during pre-production. Early concept art by Erik Tiemens shows Jakku as the home of a different heroine altogether — a “hothead” named Kira — and that, though it was always slated to be a junk world, there were thoughts about making it more of a jungle, and then an ice planet. The second of those ideas can be seen in Tiemens’ drawing of a much cooler Jakku, while the final piece of artwork in the post indicates that a crashed Imperial space station had been under consideration as one of the area’s defining features.

Besides providing die-hards with some fascinating insight into the story’s evolution, this concept art also underscores how much design work — and debate — goes into crafting the sprawling Star Wars universe. To see the images of alternate Jakku, head over to the Star Wars page on Instagram.